.
There’s a difference between justice and revenge. People say there isn’t, but they’re wrong. Justice is just revenge with rules. Revenge is simply justice without the arbitrary guardrails society seems to think it needs.
Personally, I think there are people who’ve 100% earned their endings, and then some. I don’t know if I believe in karma. But I believe in making sure people feel what they’ve made others feel.
That’s probably fucked up.
But then again, so am I.
Be heard,
-Me
MILENA
I’m early.
Which is…horrifying.
Of all the ways I expected tonight to play out, showing up to this early—whatever this is—wasn’t part of the plan.
I glance up at the front of Greymoor Manor from across the quiet, tree-lined Manhattan street.
How did I expect tonight to go? Why am I even here? The easy answer would be to say because he threatened me.
I’ll fucking find you anyway.
But that’s a flimsy, shitty excuse.
I’m a fucking Kalishnik. I have multiple bodyguards and live in a house with tighter security than most royal palaces.
…Granted, that means fuck-all in this debate, considering Nero already slipped into my house to do anything he wanted to me while I slept.
A low, achy throb tightens in my core. I chase it away.
If I was really worried about Nero “coming after me” or “finding me”, I could request a twenty-four-hour armed guard, or tell my father about Nero’s little visit. That would result in a top-to-bottom overhaul of our entire security system, probably our whole organization, by the next day.
But I haven’t told Papa.
I haven’t told anyone. And not because I’m scared of Nero.
Maybe because I’m scared of how easily he slips through my defenses. Not Papa’s guards and security systems, but my own mental defenses and walls.
Which brings me back to my original question: why the hell am I back here for this thing with Nero, at the demand of a man who chased me through this house in the dark, broke into my room, put his hands and mouth on me, and then did it again last night in the ladies’ room at Doomsday?
Because you want to be.
It’s a sick truth: I’m here because a dark, fucked-up part of me is curious.
The other night, he invited me to look over an edge I’ve stayed away from for years. The first problem is that I did.
The second one is that I liked what I saw.
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself.
The night air is colder than usual for this time of year, but perhaps it’s just me. My body’s running hot, my skin electrified. Every nerve feels lit up, buzzing. Waiting.
Nero will think I’m here because of his threats. He’ll think I’m scared…and maybe I am, a little. But it’s not just the allure of him letting me taste that dark fantasy.
It’s that I know how well he can give me that taste.
Because he did so once before, when he gave me a private, guided tour of the sort of darkness I’d only fantasized about. A glimpse of sweet madness.
I’m almost certain that he’s the one I used to write to. The boy behind the letters who told me his nightmares and asked about mine. Who confessed the worst parts of himself—dark, dangerous, things no one else would understand. Trusted me with them.
It wasn’t just the rush of talking to a stranger about my sick fantasies and having him tell me they weren’t sick, that I wasn’t alone in having them. I didn’t just crave the darkness he could pull from me.
I craved him—at least, the version of him I used to know. I craved the way he made me feel seen.
Was it love? Or was I just young and stupid and lonely enough to fall for a voice on a page? I don’t know. It’s a question I’ve asked myself for four years.
I don’t even know if I want to know at this point. Because that was four years ago, and I’m so different from that young, naive girl that I don’t even know if she’d recognize the me I’ve become.
And him? If that was Nero I wrote to and then gave myself to four years ago, who the hell is the man he’s become?
The Nero I knew—again, if it was Nero—was sharp, with a darkness you couldn’t ignore. A thoughtful kind of darkness, though. Quiet. Haunted in a way that made you want to get closer instead of…well…run.
Nero De Luca today is cold, and brutal, and untouchable. He leads his empire with ice in his veins and blood on his hands.
That’s the Nero I see in the papers and hear about in whispers.
I exhale slowly. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong for years. Maybe it wasn’t him at all.
Which brings me, yet again, to the question at hand: why the fuck am I here?
I swallow it back as I cross the street, slip through the gate at the sidewalk, and slowly make my way up the walkway to the imposing front steps. I start to climb them, wondering how exactly one announces themselves at something like this.
Do I ring the bell? Knock? Let myself in like last time, so we can get right to it?
It.
Hot, mortifying need tightens around my middle as my thighs clench. I don’t have to dive into any cliches about “wondering what’s in store for me”.
I know exactly what’s waiting for me behind that front door.
A monster I’m eager for.
A darkness I crave.
A type of brutal violence that makes my nerves tingle and my core turn molten.
I should turn around, take a cab home, and scrub this whole thing from my life. Go take a bath. Better yet, go to therapy.
Instead, I hover.
Waiting, like I need one more second to gather my courage before I step inside.
A breeze rustles through the trees behind me. I close my eyes for half a second. And that’s when I hear the voice coming from around the side of the house.
“Really pushing it on fucking time. I told you before 11 was best.”
I stiffen.
That’s Nero.
I turn and leave the path to the front steps, moving through the shadows, keeping close to the hedges that ring the mansion as I creep around the side.
He speaks again, but this time, the wind picks up, and I don’t catch what he’s saying. Just that there’s a sharp tone in his voice that pricks my curiosity.
I stop just short of the corner and keep myself pressed into the shadows as I glance around it.
Nero’s standing beside an overgrown willow tree in the side yard.
He’s not alone.
There’s another man, as tall as Nero, with broad shoulders and dark hair, his hands in the pockets of a fashionable black overcoat.
When he turns slightly, my brows arch in surprised recognition.
I guess it’s not that strange to see Kir Nikolayev talking to Nero. They’re both the heads of hugely powerful New York crime organizations. And yet, as far as I know—and, as a Kalishnik, I do have my finger on the pulse of these things—the De Luca and Nikolayev families have no formal alliance.
I know Kir two ways. The first is easy: he’s Bratva, and he and Papa are at the very least friendly acquaintances that have done plenty of business together.
But I also know Kir through the Zakharova Ballet: he’s both the heaviest investor in the company itself as well as the owner of its home, the Mercury Theatre.
The dim lights from a neighboring building glint through the swaying branches of the willow tree, casting drifting shadows across Kir’s face.
Virtually every dancer in the company has at least a little bit of a crush on the man, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The women. The gay guys. The straight guys all have man-crushes on him. Even Maggie jokes that her longtime girlfriend has preemptively given her a “hall pass” for Kir, if it ever came to it.
He’s seriously that hot.
Older, with a sort of gravitas that pulls you in. Dark hair that’s only slightly salt and peppered at the temples, dark, piercing eyes, a razor-sharp jaw, and a physique that rivals most of the male dancers half his age that I work with daily. I know this because he’s, on occasion, been known to use the weight room downstairs at the theater.
Shirtless.
You wouldn’t even have to know that he’s the head of a hugely powerful Bratva empire to feel the power he exudes when he walks into a room.
Brooklyn and Val call it his “big dick energy.”
I just think he’s the kind of man who built an empire from dirt and blood.
“Out of curiosity…”
My eyes snap from Kir to Nero, and forbidden heat teases down my spine.
Kir might be very good-looking, and obviously radiates power you can feel in the air. But Nero?
Nero’s another sort of power altogether: darker, edgier, more feral. Kir’s handsome; Nero’s got a wolfish, primal vibe.
Kir looks like he would pick you up in a limo and take you to dinner at a restaurant he’s completely booked out, if not bought for the occasion; Nero looks like he would cut your clothes off with a blade, chase you naked through the woods, then fuck you with his hands around your throat until you see God.
…And again, there might be something severely wrong with me. Because it’s that Nero vibe, hands down, that makes my skin tingle and my pulse run like napalm in my veins. That makes my thighs clench together as needy heat pools in my core.
“Why this?” Nero growls. “I mean instead of the usual, you know, me pointing the Black Court in the right direction and doing it that way?”
Wait. What the hell is the Black Court?
Kir smiles in the gloom. “I think these two might be more…personal for you.”
“This would be a lot easier if you’d drop the smoke and mirrors,” Nero growls.
A low, rumbling chuckle escapes Kir’s throat. “Every tribe needs a ghost story. Every club needs a boogeyman. I can be that for you.”
I watch as Nero rolls his eyes.
“And how is your little club,” Kir asks in a low, baritone voice, his tone almost sarcastic or mocking.
“Not that I actually think you give a fuck, but the Black Court is doing just fine.” He smirks. “Don’t worry, I’ve assured that they still think you’re out to get them.”
Kir’s teeth flash in a dark grin, just a for a second.
“Not that you haven’t gone out of your way to sell it that you don’t like the court,” Nero mutters.
Kir shakes his head. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like your vigilante outlook. But I’ve decided that instead of destroying the court, it’s simpler to just use it for my benefit.’
‘That because of me?’ Nero mutters.
“Perhaps a little,” Kir smirks before clearing his throat. “Anyway, I come bearing gifts’.
Kir glances down at what looks like two big bags of trash sitting on the ground behind him. He turns, then winds up and kicks one of the bags as hard as he can.
A low, wet grunt comes from inside it, and my heart lurches.
It’s not bags of trash. It’s bags of people.
Kir kicks the second bag, and another voice groans in pain.
A dark glint flashes across Nero’s face—so sharp and vicious that I feel it like a blade down my spine, even from here. He squats down, grabs the top of both bags and yanks them open, revealing the two men, bound and on their knees.
I shiver.
They’ve been brutalized: bloodied, swollen faces, bruised eyes halfway shut, blood trickling from myriad bashes, cuts, split lips and broken teeth and noses.
“Jesus. Did you get bored on the way here?” Nero mutters under his breath.
“What they did to your family hurt me, too,” Kir growls, his eyes glinting darkly.
Nero just nods, like he knows exactly what that means.
“Who are they?”
Kir grunts as he looks back down at the men. He winds up again and kicks one of them as hard as he can in the side, making the man shriek into what I’m now realizing is a gag. The man’s bloodied face twists in pain as he moans and cries.
“These two,” Kir snarls, “were the ones who held your father down and made him watch.”
The murderous coldness in Nero’s eyes sends a rippling chill through my body. The way his face instantly shifts from human to inhuman is both terrifying and electrifying. And when he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a straight edge razor that would look right at home in Sweeney Todd’s hand, it’s paralyzing.
I don’t breathe. I just stare, my eyes wide and my pulse jangling as Nero twirls the blade meditatively in his hand, looking right at the two men. They sob and scream into their gags, but it’s too late.
Nero’s already decided their fate.
He drops to his haunches in front of to the two men. He holds the glinting edge of the razor to the first man’s jugular, making the captive squirm and cry out, straining helplessly against the ropes binding him.
“Their names were Antonio and Natalia,” Nero growls. “They were my mother and father. And you fucking killed them.”
He quickly yanks the blade across the man’s throat, instantly opening it. Sticky red blood floods out, immediately turning the man’s face white as his life-force gushes down his chest and torso. Then his eyes roll back and he flops forward into the dirt.
My eyes bulge as I clamp a hand tight over my mouth.
Holy fucking shit.
The second man is squealing and screaming, staring at his dead friend on the ground as Nero rises. He moves over one step, then squats again, bringing the blade to the second man’s throat.
“Their names were Antonio and Natalia,” Nero repeats. “They were my mother and father. And you fucking killed them.”
The second one starts to scream—through the gag, through the sheer fucking terror painted across his face.
I watch with unblinking, terrified eyes as Nero grabs a fistful of the man’s hair, yanks his head back, then slices his throat in one precise motion, like he’s done it a hundred times.
He probably has.
I’m frozen. Every part of me is numb—except my pulse, which is punching behind my chest like it wants to break free.
Kir watches from the side with almost clinical detachment.
Nero wipes the blade on one of the dead men’s shirts, then stands, calmly cracking his knuckles. It doesn’t look like his heart rate has gone up at all.
I press my hand tighter to my mouth, bile rising in the back of my throat.
What the fuck am I doing here.
This was supposed to be a game. Some dark, messed-up chase kink I could dip my toe into and crawl back out of when I was done.
Not this.
Not. At. All.
Kir is saying something to Nero, the two of them talking quietly like Nero didn’t just execute two guys in the back yard of a cursed mansion.
I don’t hear what they’re saying. I’m too busy staring at Nero’s hands.
The same hands that touched me and made me shake. That pulled me apart like I was something breakable.
Now they’re covered in blood.
I take one step back, then another.
Quietly. Cautiously. Like I’m afraid he’ll smell me if I’m not careful.
My heart’s hammering so loud I swear I can feel it in my teeth. My skin’s gone cold, and my legs are shaky.
Nero just folds the blade and slips it back into his coat like this was a routine chore.
For him, maybe it was.
But I can’t do this.
Whatever darkness I thought I was going to be playing with when I showed up here tonight—I wasn’t ready for this man.
Not even close.
I turn and start back the way I came, fast but silent, the way you instinctively move when you’re in the presence of a predator.
I don’t look back. All I want is distance.
By the time I’m scurrying back across the street from Greymoor, my breathing is ragged and my head a jumble of emotions and panicked thoughts.
I don’t stop until I’m four blocks away and my lungs are burning.
Then I press my back to a brick wall and slide down, my face buried in my hands.
